Response from Caught Cheater - Worth Reading

I'm pretty sure we can assume that outside of chess_kebab's joke, 90%+ of the instances where [COMMENT DELETED] was posted in place of a comment, it was done by a moderator.  It seems very improbable that this specific method, with all capital letters.. block parenthesis... etc. - would cooincidentally be used by various different members.  Just saying...

 No, that's what comes up automatically after every comment that gets deleted.

Darn really?  Thanks for the info u2, this'll be tougher than I thought then.

It's been happening for a long time that posts have been seemingly randomly deleted. Could it just be a bug or something?

Well I mentioned it to Erik, he said he'll look into it.  The fact that the well-respected NM Reb got his post deleted without his knowledge is helping our cause.  If it was just me, I doubt he'd care as much.  He's probably familiar with the usual lowbrow stuff I normally post. 

 Technically it is against the rules, but if the staff are still serious about that rule then they aren't leading by example very well!

Thanks for the info.  I honestly don't remember what I posted so I couldn't tell you whether it was out of bounds or not.  A brief notification by the mod would have been nice though.

 No, the staff definately have a policy of no cheating discussion of any kind. This is the reason they always give when they lock a forum due to cheating discussion:

"Cheating in chess is an issue that Chess.com takes seriously. That said, it has minimal impact on the site and shouldn't be a concern for 99.9% of players. Unfortunately, there is much more paranoia about the topic than it actually deserves."

It is officially their policy not to allow cheating discussion but one they are obviously not anymore taking seriously.

Mike, kebabs is wrong about this one, note atomic's post above.

The rationale for that policy is that most often the cheating discussion threads add to the overall paranoia and what not.

I'm sure in this instance, Erik's intent was that this would serve as more of a cheating deterrant than anything else, which is why he decided to raise the issue.

It's not at all chess.com recanting their earlier position on cheating discussions, and really - it's NOT to discuss cheating. It's a momentary, staff incited warning sign along the way, saying: Look, we even ban moderators, paying members, etc.

That is all, and there isn't any need to drag it out either.

 Ah i see that you dont get it.  Maturity here means to acknowledge your own mistake instead of denying it and taking responsible for it.  Yup he must have cheated a  LOT of people but now he has realised it was wrong.  That matters.  To those who think that this should not be made public, think again.  This a lesson to all.  If  anybody is cheating, take note & repent as it will do you no good!!! BTW we learn our lessons through our or others mistake. Thats why this column get 5 star from me

In addition to what Rael said, just about every other forum topic was about cheating before the new "cheat posting" rules were established.

As far as Erik starting a topic about cheating:  he is the boss and can do what he pleases.

 I understand, and can certainly respect your opinion Dexter.  And if im taking this to an extreme then my apologies, but life to to short to hold a grudge.  And im big on forgiveness.

 Cheating at anything is mainly done to try and satisfy self esteem issues, which obviously it doesnt do.

 And yet, the staff don't bother to lock this thread and are even joining in with the discussion themselves.

Maybe they thought that it was time, maybe they thought it was warranted by the instance of losing Lizard87. It is important for a community to go through a psychological catharsis related to the loss/adjustment. So a thread can happen, I don't see it as in any way confusing or hypocritical. Maybe the subtle caveat on the end of the "cheating discussion policy"... "unless the staff sees fit to start one."

 Ok, you're welcome to your opinion but I disagree. To me 14 pages of cheating discussion without anyone stepping in is rather counter-intuitive against the staff's idea of trying to lessen the cheating paranoia whatever way one looks at it.

babs, it helps to understand the timeline behind the rules on posting about cheating.

1. Originally, it was ok to post forum topics about cheating. It was against the rules to name names, unless that user had already been banned for cheating.
2. Because there were too many of these threads, and new ones would pop up all the time (and probably because they were crowding the "recent forum posts" space), they decided to create a single cheating forum topic and to lock all other ones that were created. Also around this time, they decided to create another topic dedicated exclusively to posting names of banned users.
3. #2 went on for quite awhile, but then ultimately they decided to create a Cheating Discussion group. It had the benefit of no longer having the single topic in the recent forum posts, and also had the benefit of allowing multiple topics, and had the drawback of being an opt-in group, so that a barrier to entry reduced the total postings and contributions.

Fair enough - I was just speculating on what I imagine their rationale is.

But you don't actually see any difference between a silly, member-created discussion like "lol how do you cheat in chess" on the forums and one due to the extenuating circumstances of having caught a mod cheating, and who offered not only that momentary example but then added his apology on top of it as perhaps warranting a unique exeption? Shrug.

FWIW, my deleted message was deleted by me.  Something weird happend in the "Save & preview" window while I was editing, possibly because I had two tabs open -- one for looking at posts on earlier pages and one for actually entering text. Somehow I ended up with the same message in the edting box of both tabs and it wouldn't let me get out of either one by simply deleting one of the copies.  So I ended up posting the same message twice, and then deleting the duplicate.  Two people managed to post in the interim, so the deleted one is actually three spaces after my first.  It does sort of look like I started to say something else and thought the better of it, but that wasn't the case.